Category Archives: The Boy

Forty-Two Months Old!

Ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved Lego. I was going to search for something between the sizes of the Mega Bloks he’d been using when he was younger and the standard Lego size, but apparently he’s been working with standard Lego at school, so HRH brought up the huge bag of Lego that t! bequeathed to the boy and opened it up for him. (For those who were in the S:1999 game, there were parts of Moonbase Alpha still extant but not for long. I rescued the communicator before the boy wrecked it, although he did put wheels on it before I got to it.) We have made countless cars and trains and spaceships and houses since then. If anyone’s looking for gift ideas, a pile of Lego wheels would be good because there are never enough. In the realm of toys and games HRH has also introduced him to Mario Party 8 on the Wii. And as HRH and I plan to buy ourselves Rock Band for Christmas (terribly romantic, I know, but I’d rather do this than get one another things less likely to be used) I have no doubt the boy will soon be introduced to the drums there as well.

WALL*E has succeeded in completely and utterly eradicating any other film from the boy’s memory, and it’s all he watches now. He listens to the soundtrack while playing in his room and falling asleep, and now he wanders around singing the beginning of “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” as if he was our very own Michael Crawford. It’s adorable to hear him burble, “Listen, Barnaby!” and “we won’t come home until we’ve kissed a girl!” Book-wise, we’ve just finished The Wind in the Willows, and are about to start on Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House series. We all love the snuggling in the big bed and reading a chapter every night.

The biggest news this past month was the bunk bed tree fort (which is what he calls it, although the fort does double duty as a pirate ship at times, as seen in the picture). HRH and I love the twin size bed because we can actually stretch out on it and cuddle him. The boy loves it because he can roll around on it, and he loves playing on the upper level (it’s where all the tins of Lego are stored). We’ve moved all his toys into his room now, and the living room is once again a free zone. He brings toys out, but we’re enforcing the put-the-others-away-before-you-play-with-a-new-one rule.

One of the other exciting things that’s happened this month is of course the piles of snow we’ve already received. Even when there was only a scattering and the grass was still visible, he made the most of it. “I’ve never seen any child make so much out of so little,” his educator told HRH. “He was rolling in it that first day.” We’ve been adding a few seasonal decorations as the days go by. He made cut-out Christmas trees and painted a cone I’d made to look like a tree, and helped make paper chains, too. We introduced him to the Advent calendar, but he forgets most of the time (and so do we, really). Evidently we’re not doing a very good job differentiating between the season and the day itself, because Liam goes back and forth between flinging a hand out at all the snow and lights and saying, “But it *is* Christmas!” and saying very seriously in reply to something we say, “But it’s not Christmas *yet*.” Poor kid. It must be hard for him to figure out the difference because there are all sorts of Christmas-related activities going on like parties and concerts. The upstairs neighbours even hung the usual Yule stockings on the banister and he ‘s just angsting over what’s inside them. He’s at the age now where he knows he’s not supposed to open them, but that he’s still young enough that if he ‘forgot’ that he’s not supposed to open them he might get away with it. (In his mind, that is, not in our eyes.) I’d wrapped Mousme‘s hat in a gift bag and set it in to corner of the room until I next see her and he found it, bringing it into the kitchen while I was making dinner. “Oh, Mama, what’s this?” he said. “It’s Mousme’s hat,” I said. “Oh, can I see what’s inside?” he said. And before I could say No, or Yes but be very careful because it’s not yours, he had slipped the tissue paper out of the bag and deftly unwrapped it. Even though he’d seen me knitting it and had seen the finished product he held it up and said, “Oh, Mama, it’s beautiful! Great job!” Then he wrapped it back up again and slipped it back into the bag, and even replaced the bag exactly where it had been. So he got the fun of unwrapping a present after all, and he practised his gracious comments on a received item, and complimented me all at the same time. We’ll see how much of that he remembers in the upcoming week.

He’s figured out that knitting is something that I do and enjoy, and he wants to help. So he’ll come up to me and pick up the ball of yarn and say, “I’ll be your helper and hold this for you.” Which would be fine if he actually did hold it, but he doesn’t. He lifts it and pretends it’s a balloon, or drops it and then the cat chases it, or some other sort of mishap occurs. When it warmed up enough for me to wear my red coat and newly knitted scarf he looked at me while struggling to get his arms into his coat sleeves. “Why are you wearing that yarn around your neck?” he said. I thought it was interesting that he knows a knitted item is made of yarn, and that once it’s knitted up he stills identifies it as yarn, not whatever object it’s been knitted into.

In the milestone category, he left his first voice mail message on Ceri’s birthday. Despite coaching as to what to expect, when the beep sounded and the time came to leave his message he kind of hung there, a tiny smile on his face, waiting for someone to say something. I finally got him to say “Happy birthday!!!” (kind of slurred together and rushed and somewhat shouted), then I disconnected the call for him. I left a message afterwards explaining what had just happened. Ceri seemed amused by the effort he’d made, so all was well. He left his first blog comment this month, too. And of course he attended his first evening concert.

At his semiannual checkup the doctor reported that he weighs 35 lbs and stands 100 centimetres tall. That’s right; he’s hit a metre. We’re going through shoes like there’s no tomorrow; he’s gone up three shoe sizes in the past twelve months. He’s maintaining a steady weight and stretching upwards. I knew this before the doctor measured him because his 3T pants no longer need to be folded up like they did a couple of months ago. It’s unreal. He’s been going on eating binges too, where he essentially grazes all day and has two or three helpings of dinner. I was most impressed by this doctor’s appointment. For the first time Liam answered all of her questions himself (very clearly, too) and stood still on the scale and against the height chart.

He’s turning into more and more of a character every day. It’s great fun. I feel bad sometimes that I can’t keep up with him (well, he was home for almost six days straight with a bad cold last week, and I was sick too, but still) and my temper gets short when he doesn’t listen or ignores what we’re telling him (ditto), but he is three and a half and testing whatever boundary he can. For every frustration there are half a dozen things to love about him and praise. We’re lucky to have him.

Other Liam posts this past month:

– Liam attends his first non-Canada Day evening concert, and attends a cello lesson
– “You must never go down to the end of the town, if you don’t go down with me”
– Liam helps us vote in the provincial election
– the arrival of the bunk beds and the rearranging of the bedroom
– a future as the drummer in a punk band
– overheard from the back seat of the car

More Knitting Wiktory!

As of 21h00 last night, I had a finished scarf.

It’s not as long as I’d hoped for, but it does cross over in front sufficently to keep it tucked in and to keep my neck warm. I do think I will get another skein (did I mention I was using Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed in Licorice? It’s lovely stuff, once you get used to the silk slubs) and knit that up then graft them together, but it’s not pressing. Because yes, I finished the scarf to go with my new red woollen coat just in time for the temperature to plunge and my down-filled coat to come out of the closet. And this scarf is not the right accessory for a down-filled coat at all at all at all. Also, if it is cold enough to be wearing the down-filled coat, it is not warm enough to get away with this scarf.

Well, it will look beautiful with the coat when things warm up. And goodness knows the Montreal temperatures can’t stay steady for too long, so I imagine I’ll have opportunity to wear the new coat and scarf together again soon.

In other weather-related news, all the trees are encased in ice and the sun is shining though them. The big maple out front looked like its twigs were made of light this morning. Gorgeous. The library grounds were like a fairyland.

Further Wiktory!

Gentle readers, I have a fully functional set of armwarmers.

Naturally I leapt directly into doing up the faggot lace scarf. Which isn’t going as quickly as it could, really, because I’m using size 15 needles in wood, which are blunt, and the wool/silk/cashmere yarn isn’t as soft and slippy as the merino was. (Ah, merino. I miss you already.) I could use my shiny metal turbo circular needles and just use them like regular needles, but they’re a different size. I’ll give this version of the scarf another four or five rows and see how it goes.

(Note: I have nothing to knit once the scarf is done. Augh! I could do test swatches in the acrylic I have stashed in the cupboard for arts and crafts, but it’s acrylic and it’s scritchy and doesn’t flow well. I have become a yarn snob in less than four weeks. It’s awful.)

Lots of snow out there. And it’s still coming down, in much fatter and fluffier flakes than it was this morning. Evidently everyone forgot how to drive this morning, because it took HRH an hour and a half to get into work instead of twenty minutes.

The boy is now at the coughing stage of the cold. Lovely. I suspect we will be running out of tissues very, very soon. We’ll bake cookies after his nap, and have them with real hot chocolate topped with frothed milk.

Winter: Present!

Yesterday after doing a bunch of HTML for the pro site (yay me), I spent much argh-filled time whacking at php and css code about which I know, well, exactly nothing (argh, why does WordPress hate me so?). Then I played the cello very loudly for about an hour, polishing up the recital stuff for this coming Sunday. I toyed with the idea of suiting up in my down-filled winter coat and going out to vote (because here in Canada our punishment for being less than stoic about sub-Arctic temperatures is being forced to vote in YET ANOTHER ELECTION — did I mention that my municipal riding has a by-election I must vote in next Sunday as well?) but decided to wait for HRH and the boy to come home so we could all do it together. I played more cello instead. I’m really happy with how my technique has firmed up over the past two months with my teacher: my sound is so much better.

Going out with the boys was kind of fun, because we looked at all the Christmas lights that are up in the neighbourhood as we walked to the polling station. And also because the boy carried my voter card and handed it importantly to everyone who needed to look at it, telling them with confidence, “I’m here to vote.” He went in with HRH, and as HRH and I swapped places I could hear the ripple of “He’s so cute!” comments coming from the tables of scrutineers. Apparently he helped HRH hold the pencil to mark the ballot, and put the actual ballot in the box. (Which isn’t entirely legal, but evidently the cute factor won out over hard-hearted scrutineers who might have insisted on By The Book electoral activity. Everyone seemed to approve of the Start Them Young attitude we have about it.) (Oh, the election results? Our province elected a Liberal government for a third term, this time as a majority. The PQ has surged back into the position of official opposition, the leader spouting all sorts of rabid separatist rhetoric in the post-results speech that wasn’t really heard during the campaign. Thanks for stirring up local anti-Canada sentiment again with your idiocy at the federal level, Stephen Harper. You idiot, you’ve thrown our province back into the late seventies.)

Today, however, the boy is home with a cold. He impressed his teachers to no end yesterday by asking to have his nose blown when necessary, and then actually blowing his nose when a tissue was applied to it. “We have five year olds who can’t do that,” his teacher said in astonishment. I’m hoping he’s over the really bad part so he can go to school tomorrow, otherwise I suspect he’ll be home until Friday. (And as if on cue, there is a call of, “Mama, can you blow my nose please?” from the living room.) With the number of colds making the rounds of schools and just about everywhere else, I shouldn’t be surprised. Most people I know are sick, too. This is the part of winter that isn’t so much fun.

Last night I also cast on my second armwarmer and am two-thirds of the way done. Amazing how quickly it goes when you’re curled up in front of the election coverage. I might even be able to start my scarf today, if I feel up to trying the lace pattern that I twisted so badly on my test yarn.

Right. Off to return to the boy, who is watching Richard Scarry cartoons on TV while I check out what’s going on in the world. I intend to finish that armwarmer before lunch. I need them: my office is on an outside corner and is poorly insulated, so I get all sorts of cold radiating in from the corner in which my computer is set up. Yesterday I wore woollen tights under my jeans and a shirt under my heavy woollen sweater. Also, they’ll help my hands warm up faster when I play the cello.

“You must never go down to the end of the town, if you don’t go down with me.”

I skipped into the living room to tell HRH that the luthier had a new 7/8 for me to try.

“When would you go?” he asked.

“I’m thinking this Friday afternoon,” I said. “Next week’s lesson is Friday night and I won’t be racing off anywhere once it’s done, so I can ask my teacher what she thinks of it and we’ll have the time to discuss it. If I go then, I can meet you at work afterwards and we can both head over to your parents’ place to pick up the boy.”

“Mama,” said the boy, suddenly standing in front of me. He raised a finger and shook it at me, looking very serious. “You should never, never, never, ever go shopping… without… a boy.”

We looked at him, mouths open. He nodded again, certain of himself. “Yes. You should never go shopping without a boy.”

HRH and I melted from the cuteness, and we finally broke out of the stasis to laugh and laugh. I grabbed the boy and hugged him hard. Then I went and hunted up “Disobedience” by A.A. Milne to read to him for the first time.

Monday!

According to the professor I delivered a kick-ass guest lecture on Neopaganism this morning (not her exact words, but my interpretation of them). As usual I completely misjudged the time. Out of the fifteen pages I got through ten in my allotted hour, and fielded some excellent questions from the students. (Good grief, there were something like seventy there. I am used to between seven and twelve.) And then a great brief discussion with some of them afterwards in the hall, and then a two-hour long talk with the professor over tea. A fabulous morning! And not only did she give me the usual university honorarium fee for speaking, she bought me — are you ready for this? — sea-salt caramels as a personal thanks. I kid you not. She’s a saint. I love her.

It felt really good to sit and talk with someone who is an academic and who comes at the whole spirituality/mysticism thing from a similar angle. It helps that she’s a recent mom and married to someone active in comics/SF fandom, too, I think. Similarities facilitate grokking (for the lack of a better term). I’m so glad we’ve finally met in real life instead of being online friends only.

I’ve just handed in my edits of the hearthcraft book. Let’s see if I can do a brief recap of the weekend before I have to throw myself into work again.

Friday: HRH takes a half-day off work to get the winter tires put on the car. He takes me out to lunch and we sit and converse like actual grownups. We both get haircuts. I take my latest US freelance cheque to the bank and make fifty dollars on it. That’s the kind of exchange rate I like! After the now traditional weekly homemade pizza for dinner I head out for the dress rehearsal for the concert. Sat on awful stacking chairs with metal frames and bent wooden seats. We do not sound awful. Pretty encouraging, actually. There is a double bassist! ( “He lives in Kirkland,” says our guest conductor. “Imagine!”)

Saturday: HRH puts the lights and garland up along the front balcony. We head out to Canadian Tire for a new scraper/brush (we break one every single year), replacement bulbs for the strings of lights, seat covers for the car, and a string of lights for the boy’s bunk bed. We have lunch out at the hot dog place. Everyone in the store and restaurant is curiously laid back, which makes HRH and I suspicious. The boy naps, and HRH heads out to Mousme‘s place to talk about painting it. I do work on the lecture notes. It feels like I spend most of my afternoon just kind of waiting for the concert; I hate that. We change and head out. The boy is very excited about going to the concert like a grown-up person. He and HRH drop me off for warm-up and head over to Tim Horton’s for a little snack. The concert goes brilliantly. The boy claps loudly and yells, “YAY!” after big exciting finishes. A little squirmy, a little out of it during the first part of the second half (translation: flopped over Dada’s shoulder and drowsing) but thoroughly awake when we play the Brahms Hungarian Dances. (I suspect we woke a few other people up, too.) People I expected to see are in the audience, as well as people I didn’t expect to see, which was a lovely surprise indeed. Many compliments on the contrasting dynamics (ha!) and general loveliness of the evening. In my rush to get the boy home I forget to drop off my music post-concert and also to grab my lovely red water bottle from under my chair. (I remembered it when we were on the highway. Fortunately someone picked it up for me.)

Sunday: More work on the lecture notes. We manage to get the boy to nap early to facilitate the going-to-a-cello-lesson thing later. I bake brownies. Wake boy up just before 2:30, bundle him and cello into the car. HRH drops us off at my teacher’s house. The other little boy does not join us to observe the younger kids’ lesson, alas and to the boy’s disappointment, so it’s myself, the boy, and a parent. The girls have lots of fun, and the boy observes them very quietly for the first half and gets a bit squirmy during the last half. He is particularly fascinated by a game where instead of playing a note when it occurs in the music (an F, for example, or an open string) they stand up then sit down in strict time and then play the following note. He starts standing up and sitting down too. Also very interested in them using a ball in the left hand to move around the fingerboard while bowing. He informs people importantly that he was at the concert last night. He does not embarrass me in any way (not that I expected him to) although he came close when he initially darted into the room between the instruments and both I and my teacher lunged after him, telling him to never, ever run around the cellos. (He knows this; we have the same rule at home. But it was a new place and had all sorts of exciting things to look at. He’s three, as we all keep forgetting.)

HRH returns to pick the boy up and take him to the b-o-o-k-s-t-o-r-e to play with the train layout. I tell him to come back for me between 5:15 and 5:30, closer to 5:30; he misunderstands me completely. We have our group lesson, which is great. We run a bit late and I dart out at 5:45… to find no one there. Apparently HRH showed up between 5:00 and 5:15 and gave up on me not five minutes before I emerged, thinking I must have said 6:15. The car arrives at 6:05. No harm done; it’s not like the weather is driving sleet or bitter wind.

HRH has picked up WALL*E on DVD while the boy and I are at the group lesson; we all go home and watch it while eating dinner. The boy is absolutely riveted, and despite the lateness of dinner and so forth we decide to allow him to watch the whole thing before going to bed. (After reading the last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner curled up with Mama and Dada in their bed, of course. See the earlier post.)

That, in a nutshell, was the weekend. There was a lot of music, which was lovely. I discovered yet again in the group lesson that I have a nicer tone than I think I do. It has been decided that I will play the first Bach minuet as a solo since someone else is now playing the third, which suits me just fine because that was the one I was going to choose anyhow. We got yet more new music. And I admit that I had to look up the music for “Twinkle” when I offered to play the theme while others played a great blues progression boogie-type thing under it. Yes, I am that lame; I need music for “Twinkle.” Also, it does wonders for the ego when I offer to switch from the group playing the theme to the blues progression to help support it and the teacher says, “If you do that I’ll be switching to the theme,” because it suggests I’m anchoring the part I’m playing with the others. Go me and my “Twinkle” skills! I really enjoy the group lessons. And I could feel a difference between my showing in this one as compared to the last one. I’m a lot happier with my sound, thanks to the tonalization work and the bow management I’ve been working on.

I was pleased with my showing at orchestra too. I nailed some of the harder scale passages and completely blew others (usually the ones I was confident about going into the concert, ironically enough). Turns out that we have a break at orchestra until early January. Our next guest conductor is very pregnant and is due next week or so, and there’s only one available date in December for our usual rehearsal space. So rather than trying to figure it all out we’re taking a six-week leave.

Okay, I think that’s everything. I have some serious writing to do this week as well as that freelance assignment, so off I go.